309. Never Back Down (2008)

Starring: Sean Faris, Amber Heard, Cam Gigandet

Director: Jeff Wadlow

Running Time: 110 mins

Never Back Down is an American film about a teenager who discovers a local fight club, where he meets an inspirational martial arts veteran, and learns the skills necessary to defeat an arrogant, but powerful boy at his school.

I would say that the first hour or so of this film was rubbish. The whole story was predictable, cheesy and very annoying to watch, not to mention the fact that I found the main character so annoying that it was very difficult to side with him in his times of peril throughout the story.

Also, the fact that this was set in a high school seemed to undermine what could have been a more serious story, as many of the reasons that the main character ended up in fights were either due to ‘popularity’ or just random anger.

However, the second part of the film; the last 40 minutes or so, was great to watch. It felt like a whole new story, and was a lot more interesting and serious than the previous parts of the film, as the characters became more sensible, and they developed worthwhile motives for becoming involved in these fights, which made it much more entertaining and intriguing to watch.

Overall, I’ll give this a 6.5, because although the climax to the film was fantastic, I felt that as a whole, it was disjointed, predictable and very annoying to watch.